Prior research finds that women receive lower salaries than men. Similarly, we show that female audit partners in Belgium receive significantly lower compensation than male partners. However, there are alternative explanations for the pay gap other than gender discrimination. For example, the...

In an effort to make audit reports more informative to investors, the U.K. recently passed a new audit reporting standard that requires auditors to disclose the risks of material misstatement (RMMs) that had the greatest effect on the financial statement audit. Using short-window market...

A company officer is an "alumnus" if he previously worked for an audit firm. Iyer et al. (1997) find alumni have ties with their former audit firms and alumni are more inclined to provide economic benefits to former firms if they have stronger ties. If the alumnus is a senior corporate officer,...

Prior research finds that women receive lower salaries than men. Similarly, we show that female audit partners in Belgium receive significantly lower compensation than male partners. However, there are alternative explanations for the pay gap other than gender discrimination. For example, the...

Regulators have expressed concerns about the “revolving door” between auditors and clients, whereby audit employees move directly from audit firms to audit clients (i.e., “direct alumni hires”). Regulators are concerned that these direct hires could compromise audit quality, partly...

We examine how often audit firms are sued in a large sample of accounting lawsuits that allege financial reporting failures. We find an insignificant relation between the likelihood of auditor litigation and restatements but the likelihood of auditor litigation is strongly related to the types...

Regulators have expressed concerns about the “revolving door” between auditors and clients, whereby audit employees move directly from audit firms to audit clients (i.e., “direct alumni hires”). Regulators are concerned that these direct hires could compromise audit quality, partly...

Audit firms need to provide high quality audits but they also need to please their clients. We argue that these conflicting incentives become manifest when comparing the incentive effects of equity ownership on engagement quality (EQ) reviewers and audit engagement partners. We predict that EQ...